Seminar on the Discovery of Noah's Ark

Thank you, Dave, for that. So nice to see everyone and welcome those that are guests that are visiting us to this Noah's Ark seminar. As you can see, we have a model of the Ark. It's 1 by 70, so if you multiply it by 70 times, it would be the size of the Ark. And we have a little dove on the top. Remember the dove that was able to light, and then they knew that there was greenery, that they could get out of the Ark. And of course, we have the turtles at the end. They just were the last ones in. They were not left out. So that's good. So the format today, I'm just going to have some brief local announcements, and then we'll have the seminar, which is PowerPoint, so it's going to be with about 50 minutes long. We'll have a break of 10 minutes, and then we come back for your questions and answers. So I'm looking forward to that. Just write them down if you want. Don't forget them because this is an opportunity to know a lot more. And if this doesn't raise a little bit of hair on your nape, nothing will, because there's so much information that has not been published. And it's just so surprising with this age, with satellites and drones and everything, how a lot of this is being suppressed. And you can judge for yourselves at the end of the seminar about the evidence that is there for it to be where on Mount Ararat. So I'd like to begin the seminar. Give me a little background on myself. I teach biblical archaeology at Ambassador Bible College. I've been doing that for about 20 years. And actually, my interest in Noah's Ark goes back 35 years when I started a Bible commentary in-house for the church. And I went through the entire Bible looking at the best commentaries, geography, and history. And so I went through it methodically. It took me here 30 years to finish the entire thing. There's thousands of pages and everything. And when I got to Genesis 6, it had to do with Noah's Ark. And so I started doing a lot of research, what has been found. And I was able to, at that time, explain a lot of it. But my interest never diminished. And so it was in 2008 when the real breakthrough came. When there was a Hong Kong-based evangelical group that had been going for the past four years to Mount Ararat, and the guide that was a Turkish guide contacted them and said, I found something inside one of the caves up there in Mount Ararat. And so they sent the first explorer up there. And sure enough, they found these walls of wood inside what looked like a cave. And then in 2009, they had a formal expedition with seven of these Hong Kong-based evangelical explorers, plus the Turkish guides. And that's when they had the film of their discovery. Unfortunately, as soon as they had the press conference, some rival archaeologists that thought that maybe the Ark was someplace else started trashing them, denying what had been found. And I've been in contact since 2012 with one of the archaeologists that went up there, and also went inside. So I want to begin now with the PowerPoint presentation to give you an idea, because after 35 years, I was shocked in the past three years while the COVID was going on. I had sort of put that on the back burner. And just about two weeks ago, someone mentioned, you haven't said much about it. I thought, well, there's probably not that much information. And I was overwhelmed with the new information. So I want to share this with you. So let's begin with the first slide. Yes. Yeah, let's cut the lights.

And let's see if we can get this to work.

Not you can do it manually.

There we go. So let's begin with the Bible account. And as you know, the Bible does not lie. It says in Genesis 6, 13 through 16, and 8 through 4, And God said to Noah, Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch, which is tar, which is the waterproofing that it would need. You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall finish it to a cubic from above. This is talking about the windows that would go across at the top, as you can see in the model, and that it would provide ventilation, and it could also be shut or open for the light. You shall finish it to a cubic from above. That's 18 inches. And set the door of the ark in its side. You shall make it with lower second and third decks. So it would be three stories high, and then the ark rested in the seventh month on the mountains of Ararat. And so the Bible identifies it that way, and that is precisely where this ark-like object has been found for the last 15 years. Let's go forward. This is a view on the top there of Mount Ararat, almost 17,000 feet high, and then seven miles to the right is a little Ararat. So there are two volcanic mountains up there. There are 17 square miles of ice cap and snow up to 300 feet.

Okay, so archaeologist Joel Clink told me recently that that was last week. The Turkish government that knows the ark is there has UAV drones. Those are unmanned aircraft vehicles, and soldiers are guarding the area. So the Turkish government already is protecting that, but it hasn't announced it yet to the world.

For thousands of years, historians such as Berosus, 281 BC, Josephus, the famous Jewish historian of the first century, and later even Marco Polo, around 1300 AD, mentioned the ark on Ararat and of many travelers visiting it. The Armenian people who live around the area have protected it for thousands of years. Since 2021, a great ice meltback has been happening, and more of the ark can now be seen. So we've had now this is the third year of the glacier and the snow coming back down, and so it's exposing more things that were hidden by the snow. Is that a coincidence that we have now a big meltback?

Let's see one of the recent photos. This is a drone photo of an ark-like object in the Red Gorge on Mount Ararat in 2021. From that, an artist's impression based on several eyewitness accounts shows that on the right, that it's protruding from the ice. Part of the ark is visible on a mountain lake high on Mount Ararat. When the ice melts, it creates a lake around the ark. For more information, arkinsight.nl is a place you can find more information. I want to give you all the sources It's author, Gerrit Halton, Dutch ark researcher, in 2022, now puts the eyewitnesses at 25 people. Many of them have signed testimony. They've got photos. They've got objects. And yet, all of this is still being suppressed by the press. This is Dr. Joel Clank, Harvard-trained archaeologist. I've been in contact with him for about 10 years. In September 2010, they're in the city that's at the base of the mountain, Nogobayasit. He says, Noah's ark is in the southern gorge of the mountain. Remember, that's the tallest. And if you see the red dot there, that's where that gorge is. And that's where the location of the ark has been found. It's 450 feet in two parts, 4 to 11 meters beneath the surface. The rediscovery of Noah's ark is a fact and the greatest archaeological site in history. It exhibits angled hulls. They're curved. Thousands of cages inside. Three decks and large cargo holds.

You can check out his website, joelclank.com, because he is at the spearhead of the discoveries. He's in contact with the Turkish government. He's in contact with the guides there. He personally went inside. He told me years ago, he said, Mario, this is like finding a late Stone Age museum. It's like going inside, because he's been in archaeological digs throughout the world in Israel and many other areas. And they know this culture, but it never has been so well preserved as what he saw when he entered the ark.

Clerk, Clank Lamentz. He said, during the past 15 years, remember it was 2008 when the first discovery took place. Individuals and groups ascended the southern gorge of Greater Mount Ararat called Agri-Dagi in the name of Turkish. And alleged to have found Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark is recorded in the Bible, Genesis 5 through 10, and the Qur'an as an ancient monument, maritime barge, monumental maritime barge, that was constructed by Noah and his family to save his family and all animal kinds from a global flood. So actually, we are all descendants of Noah, his wife, his three sons, and the three daughter-in-laws. We all trace our genetics back to them. So we have a connection there.

And at that time, he said, there are 18 people claiming to have been at the archaeological site of Noah's Ark. Now it's up to 25. These individuals and groups have produced an abundance of photographs, videos, and publications. Yet, they have been attacked by individuals engaged in the cultural atrocity and associated with terrorism, murder, and hypocrisy. He believes this Ark will be revealed soon. That's what he told me last week. He said, Mario, it's the Turkish authorities that will eventually announce it to the world. They control the area. They have the power to do so. See, I've got to extend it out. Sometimes it gets a little stuck. There we go. I have to point it a little bit.

A 1916 through 1917 Russian expedition drawing according to eyewitnesses. Now, they had some World War I pilots go by there and they saw this object. Again, you'll have these periods when the ice will melt and it shows the Ark and then all of a sudden goes back to being very cold, covered with snow. So the Russians saw her sent an expedition with over a hundred men. Unfortunately, with the Communists in Russia taking over, they hid the evidence and persecuted the survivors over the following decades. Armenians were tortured to death. Stalin and his henchmen, Beria, the KGB, they pursued because they didn't want the Ark to be discovered because that went against their idea of communism and that the Bible is just myths and they did not want it to be discovered. And so they sent spies, they sent men, and they assassinated witnesses. And some of these Armenians finally made it to the United States.

One of them, his name is George Hagopian, and this is the way he saw the Ark when his uncle took him when there was this melting of ice back in 1902 to 1906. Usually lasts about four years, and now we're in that cycle where it's melting even more than before. So his uncle took him there. He was about 10 years old. He had no idea what he was looking at, but his uncle took him there. And if you can see to the right, there's a ladder. And notice the top. It has the windows all across because that's for ventilation. You need a lot of ventilation for the animals and for the human beings that were there. His uncle lifted him up. You can see a little figure by the ladder, and he pushed him up to where he could climb the rest of the way up to the top. And he climbed and he walked all the way in the roof. And he said, what was so strange, I saw these holes all the way up and down. All the way up and down. He didn't know what they were. Later, he realized they were the windows that were for the ventilation and also for the light to go in.

Later, most discoverers mentioned seeing it in two parts, which a great earthquake in 1940 could have affected it. So it's possibly that there was one part that was hidden. He didn't know it had been broken off, but he saw a big piece of it. Another one of the witnesses at that time was an American soldier and engineer during World War II. His name was Ed Davis. By the way, he didn't really believe in God. He was a pretty secular person. Didn't think much of the Bible. But he helped the Armenian people. He helped them build bridges and other things during that time he was there. And as a result, and to thank him for all the help he had done, they said, we're going to take you up to see Noah's Ark. Well, he didn't think much of it. And he gave the description of the Ark after he was taken to it in 1943. And we have the picture today of that Ark.

There we go. So you can see in the arrows, it's broken into two parts. Ed Davis, when he saw it, he just said it was huge. And I could tell it was had three floors on it. And he said, I can see cages inside. Because, of course, that's where all the animals were kept.

And this fits the description of what recent explorers have seen. The Ark has been broken up in two parts, but it's inside this hidden canyon. It's very hard to see. Another photograph that was taken back in 1986. A Dutch television crew filming a documentary with astronaut James Irwin, one of the men that landed on the moon. It's interesting that James Irwin, when he was there, when he landed on the moon and he saw the Earth, he said this could not all have been created by evolution. He said there has to be this God. And he became a Christian, and he became very interested in this Noah's Ark. Because he had heard stories from pilots that had gone and seen something there on the mountain. So they they filmed this documentary, and one of the photos they took, it showed this Ark-like object. Notice the windows on the top, very similar to George Hagopian's picture. Colonel Irwin died of a heart attack before he could mount a ground expedition to confirm the find. It looks like what Hagopian had seen. And now, this is what from 2008, the last 15 years, this is what has been discovered.

British-trained mountaineer Panda Lee confirmed the Ark structure existed in November of 2008. The NAMI Team, Noah's Ark Ministry International, from Hong Kong, this evangelical group. They had the construction of a model of the Ark there in Hong Kong, and it was a replica, just like the one that's in Kentucky. They did one over there in Hong Kong, and the rich, rich evangelical real estate tycoon that was there said, why don't we go up and see if we find something on Mount Ararat, and some artifacts. So he sent this group since 2004. Well, in 2008, the Turkish guide said, I found this wood on the side of this cave.

And so, they sent this mountaineer to go there. And then, the NAMI Team visited and entered the Ark in October of 2009. There were six that entered it. And in April 25, 2010, they announced their discovery of the Ark to the world. Turkish archaeology, just Octay Belly, was there and back to find. He's one of the key men in the Turkish archaeology department that has been there. He's seen it. But there's political forces. There's a lot of antagonists. They don't want the news to get out.

So, in 2012, this Noah's Ark Ministry International made a film out of their discovery. And Ray Roberts, Lenny Lentz, who's here too, and myself, we went to Pasadena when they had, in the civic auditorium there, they showed the pictures and part of the film that they were working on. And they had three of the ones who had entered the Ark. Panda Lee, who was the explorer, Andrew Young, and Fiona, the lady there at the top.

And so, after the presentation, hardly anybody really gave them much backing. It seems like the world is afraid, or somehow they just don't want to back something like this. It's a very curious phenomenon that they'll go to the moon, they'll go everywhere, but oh, Bible stuff? Oh no, well, even the evangelicals themselves are afraid, because maybe it doesn't fit their ideas.

And so, I interviewed three of them, and I talked with them in the back of the stage, and just systematically, I asked them how it happened, and what did they see, and how could they be sure of things, and guess what? All three of them said our lives have changed forever, because we were in a holy place inside. And these were not people to try to gather money. All they gathered was attack after attack. It seems like Satan himself was involved. This was the group that went up there in 2009, when they found seven different sections, as you can see at the bottom, of the Ark. And if you can see, a little orange person, dressed orange, to give you this idea, the size of these chambers.

They have a very good YouTube video. I can, if you want to write it down and look it up, yeah, it's there at this one at the bottom. It's actually in Dutch, Arkinoa. This is the first document, from the Netherlands, 2012. So you can go and look at it to find out a lot more information than I can give you right now.

Back to Dr. Clink. Dr. Joe Clink was contracted by the NAMI group. He visited the Ark in September of 2010 and described a cargo hold with a lining of small saplings wrapped in cords of flax to absorb moisture from seeds of bitter vetch, chickpea, and pea found in locust 8. That's the area. Area A, archaeologists talk about locusts, which is exactly the section, and then in area A, in the southern gorge of greater Mount Arat, he says carbon-14 dating of objects date them to 4,400 years.

But conventional dating puts it in the epipaedolithic period from 13,100 to 9,600 ago, years ago. This is the time of Neolithic farming and civilization got started. So, of course, with Noah, civilization got started again. And it's very interesting that the carbon dating didn't date it to 9,000 or to 13,000. It dated it to the biblical dates, because from 6,000 BC that we're talking about, the ark was about close to 1,600 years from Adam to Noah. And then you have the present thousands of years that are left. So this is what the carbon-14 showed. Here are some parts.

Let's see, did I skip one? Yeah. This is a photo of a wall in the ark and pegs to tie things firmly.

There are also pegs next to the roof. And what would they be used for? For the leashes for the animals. So they would put the leashes around their necks, and then they would have these pegs. And you could loop them around, and that way the animals could not move around very much. So it's got all these pegs on the top.

Also, there are many shelves on the ark and ropes made of flax. The discovery is certain and close to being announced. But will something happen again to hold off it being revealed, as in Daniel's time? In Daniel 10, 12 through 14, when the Archangel Gabriel was sent by God to give Daniel a certain announcement and information, and in Daniel 10, the Archangel Gabriel says, I couldn't make it because the evil forces, which is Satan and his demons, withheld him being able to get there. It took him three weeks to get there. And he said, the Archangel Michael had to help me. So there's this spiritual warfare going on above us. We have no idea. World events and things are being held up. Others are speeded up. Here's some objects found.

The cypress wood tested by carbon-14 method was found to be around 4,400 years old, which fits the biblical chronology of the flood around 2600 BC. There is still much food inside for animals and seeds to replant the earth. Rope made of flax was used to secure things and to tie the animals down. And you see, the chickpeas are one of the most abundant things. They're like garbanzo, but they are very primitive. They're much smaller, as you see in the arrows, than the other seeds. So this was the primitive version, or the species as such. And it's on the floors. So much. And remember, everything is frozen. So this is permafrost. It's just like putting it into a freezer, and it'll last over time. Here's another explorer that also went up. One more. There we go. In November of 2014, a U.S. engineer and author of Philip Williams went inside the Ark. The Ark has been hidden until an earthquake in 1840 revealed it. He wrote a book about the history of exploration to Mount Ararat, and lastly, about the NAMI Expedition. You can see in the YouTube second deck of Noah's Ark, Mount Ararat, Part 2, with Philip Williams. I actually purchased the book before he got inside the Ark. So he just wrote about it. He believed what they said. He had went and interviewed them, and finally they took him up there. And he was he's another eyewitness. So Dr. Clink and others who are archaeologists, experts on a lot of these things, they found the site that the wood called gopher wood, which by the way in the new international version calls it cypress. And this is the wood that has been used for thousands of years for ship building.

It has an oil content, and I have here a tablet here of the cypress wood. You can see this cypress wood is so strong and resistant to insects, to rot, because it has the resin inside the wood. This is used for cutting boards because it's very light, very floatable, but hard, and it can last almost forever. So I'm going to have my granddaughter Holly come here, and just you can just pass it out so you can see a little bit what this wood looks like. It has a natural barrier against bacteria, insects, and rot, as well as resisting shrinkage and warping. It loves to be in water. My wife and I have an interesting story about this.

One more there. Back in about 2004, for the Feast of Tabernacles, we were able to go to the area of Israel and Petra, which is the area of Jordan. Because they had one of these uprisings at the time, we couldn't make it into Israel from Jordan. So the tourist agency said, well, we can't have you go in because it's too dangerous, but guess what? We'll take you to Egypt instead. We said, we'll take it. And where the pyramids of Giza are, my wife and I were very surprised because they had uncovered two of the Pharaoh's great ships, which was sunk in the sand. They took it out and they put it in a museum. So if you ever go to the pyramids of Giza, don't forget to go to that museum. And they found an Egyptian Khufu ship next to the pyramids in Giza. It is some 4,500 years old, made of cedar, a conifer similar to cypress wood, and is still seaworthy. So here are examples of the type of wood that just lasts. And it's all joined together, not by nails, because they hadn't developed iron yet at that time, but it's called mortise and tenon, where you have on one end, you have the mortise, and then you have, well, the first piece is called the tenon, which is on the right, and the hole in the second piece is called the mortise. The joint may be glued, pinned, or wedged to lock it in place. Many times they wet it, and then they ram it in, and then afterwards, because of the moisture, it expands and locks it in. So it makes sense that something as big as an arc built that way could still exist, especially resistant to rot and many other things. What else did they find inside the arc? Here's something you probably hadn't thought of very much, but they found a lot of animal dung.

Dr. Joel Clink, when he went inside, he said, what we observed in the interior of the monumental wood structure, area A, was significant amounts of animal coprolites or fossilized dung. Animal dung is pronounced, which means a lot of, in locus 6, invisible, and locus 7. In locus 3, there is a wood door where the odor is terrible and suggests an adjacent installation with dung. Having entered the locus during the end of the summer, when things are melting on Mount Ararat, the experience was eye watering. You just didn't want to get much closer to all that, but of course there were a lot of animals there for a long time, and if it's all frozen together, then that's going to smell. And now we're going to show you one of these eyewitnesses that is pretty recent, that went up. This is Dutch archaeologist Jaren Rensson as an eyewitness of entering the Ark. We're going to listen to the YouTube video. So here's a man he's got a reputation to protect. He's a trained scientist, and he went inside.

The Dutch are quite interested in this material, and they are in site.nl for Netherlands. They've been after this for years. They've been following, backing all of this going on. And this was a Dutch archaeologist and also a Dutch doctor. They both went inside, which is we have the YouTube video, just a matter of checking it out here. We found what we came for, and that was well, that's not every expedition on Mount Aragat can can say that. So it was it was a good, good expedition. It's very easy to stand on the sideline and just shout things and and disclaim everything, but you have to see it with your own eyes and you have to examine it. And then you can say whether or not it's truth or if it's fake. We need a larger expedition up there. There is, I think, a limit to how big this expedition can be because it's just it's a very difficult climb. And you also need a lot of equipment. And yes, I think the kind of experts that we need for this expedition to get some really good data, I would say biologists, geologists, archaeologists. Okay, so that's the brief explanation, but they are working on getting a team together. Dr. Joel Clank mentions about the pitch or the tar covering the inside and the outside of the arc. He says, a pitch sealant coating of bitumen or resin of three millimeters on sealing of locus seven, area A, Noah's Ark, and the southern gorge of greater Mount Arag. And notice the same joints, the tenon and mortise, on the drawing in the bottom. That's an it's open where it used to be joined together. And you can still see some of that coating that was placed on it. Here's another new discovery. This one is just amazing. When Dr. Clank told me this one, it was so impressive. He reported in September 2022, just a year and a half ago, the context where the Noah's Ark Codex was found was in area A1, locus 14, a small enclave within the second deck of the vessel that was used to heat food and water. The manuscript was found in a small, hidden niche behind partially cut, vertically placed cypress beams which formed the walls of the installation. And what they found was a manuscript. And they call it Noah's Ark Codex. This is page two and three from area A1. They're actually seven pages. It has paleo-hebrew letters and numbers with context dating to late Epipelolithic period, 13,100 to 9,600 BC. The parchment is made from calfskin. And so again, frozen at that time, but retained. And Dr. Clank believes there were four different people that wrote it, because you could tell, and that could have been Noah and his sons. And it's something that they wrote while they were inside. It has a domesticated camel, which was very valuable in those days. And then it has on the back the mountains of Ararat.

So that's basically the evidence that I have time to give you. Now I want to show you the implications. What does this mean for us?

This is the deductions when Noah's Ark is announced. A ship some 450 feet long at 14,400 feet could not have been brought up there. How do you get a ship? 14,400 feet. It must have come down and rested there from floating above. See how our scientists can explain that. You think you can lug up a huge barge like that? 14,000 feet? No. No. It shows that it was in the watery ocean that covered the earth, and then the waters receded and the arach was placed there. That's the only explanation. This means that the waters must have been above this level, and therefore must have covered the entire earth. So once it's discovered, the geology books, you might as well throw them out, because they don't take into consideration that there was this universal flood, as the Bible said. This is one of the reasons there's a lot of resistance. A lot of people have paid a lot for their degrees and for their textbooks. And here's the most important part. Seven ways Noah's ark would be a witness. Number one, it would be a witness to a mostly unbelieving world that doesn't regard the Bible or prophecy seriously. This is going to be a wake-up call. Number two, it would be a witness that God exists. Some people doubt God's existence. This is a physical proof, for only a supreme being could have given the warning ahead of time to build such a ship. So Noah wasn't going to build it on his own, but when the supreme being told him this is what's going to happen, then Noah built it. Number four, it would be a witness to the Bible being true, for it is the only source that accurately describes such a ship and the moral and spiritual reasons for it to have been built. Number five, it would be a witness to the scientific world and show how far off man's ideas are about evolution, geology, and stratigraphy. Number six, it would be a witness to the immorality of the world, for it would show God once before had to intervene because mankind had disregarded his laws and corrupted the earth. Is the earth being corrupted today? Do we see similar society? And then number seven, it would be a witness to the church, for God would have given us the greatest marketing tool since the empty tomb of Jesus almost 2,000 years ago. Are we up to the task or will God have to use some other church of God group? We have the means, we have the most manpower, but will we be ready to take this message in a powerful way to the world? God has prepared us for this time. Even if the rest of the world wants to ignore it, we're not going to do so.

And then...

Do you realize we're living under the shadow of a new ark? What if we would have lived during that time when Noah was building the ark? How many people believed Noah? And even when all the animals came, two by twos, tamed and went inside, how many people said, you know, there's something to this. I better change. I better do something about it. Nobody listened till it was too late.

As it says in Matthew 24, 37 through 38, 39, as Jesus Christ prophesied about the end times, but as the days of Noah were, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man be. Society's going to be very similar to the time of Noah when Jesus Christ comes back. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, all involved in their own lives, like things are going to go on forever, until the day that Noah entered the ark and did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So also will be the coming of the Son of Man be. Most people are going to pay attention because they've been hardened. Their hearts and minds have been hardened to the truth. Therefore, you also be ready. Now don't get caught napping, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. It's going to be surprising. Will we heed the warning? Are we fully doing our part? Last slide. God's church will be protected. God has promised, just like he did with Noah and his family, his church will be protected in those end times. Revelation 12, 12 through 17 says, When the end time comes, therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, woe to the inhabitants of the earth. Just like in Noah's day, it was woe to the inhabitants of the earth, what was coming. For the devil has come down to you having great wrath, because he knows he has a short time. So he's going to try to overthrow God one last time, and he's going to be thrown down to the earth. He's going to have just a short period of time to cause as much damage as he can here on earth. And he says, woe if we are living in that time. Now when the dragon, talking about Satan, saw that he had been cast down to the earth, he persecuted the woman, talking about the church, who gave birth to the male child, talking about Jesus, the church that has existed through all time. But the woman, talking about the church, was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place. Just like Noah entered his place, his family entered his place, the church will enter into a place of safety. Where she is nourished, so she doesn't have to worry about, God will provide the food for a time, times, and half a time, three and a half years before Christ comes back. And she is protected here from the presence of the serpent, or Satan. And the dragon was enraged with a woman. Well, who is the woman? How can you identify her as the church? And he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God, all ten. Not nine, not eight, all ten. That means the Sabbath day, the fourth day, the fourth commandment, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, that they're teaching faithfully the word of God.

So that's what's happening. That's what's going to happen. What will we do about it? It is up to us. We have a choice. So seminar is over. Let's come back at 3.20 for questions and answers. It'll probably take 20 minutes of question and answers.